SOME IRISH NATURALISTS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE-BOOK

THE following pages deal especially with the history and progress of field work in Ireland within the domains of geology, zoology and botany, as exemplified in the life and work of its many devotees, whether working separately or in organized groups such as the scientific societies. Mr. Tempest’s original idea in suggesting to me the writing of this book was that it should be largely of a reminiscent character, since I have had, during a long life, personal contact, often intimate, with a considerable number of the naturalists whose names are enshrined below. It was suggested that personal recollection and anecdote might add interest to what otherwise might be in danger of becoming only an abridged form of biographical dictionary. A little thought showed that limitation to personal contacts would cause the omission of far too many of the more noteworthy of Irish naturalists – of all indeed whose work was done before say 1880: for which a fuller and more personal treatment of the remainder would provide but small compensation. No time limit of that kind seemed desirable or possible.

Similarly, a question arose as to the inclusion of persons who are still alive (as in Who’s Who) as against their exclusion (as in Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography, the Dictionary of National Biography, and Who was Who). That would impose a boundary which would cut right across recent research, and which would begin to become obsolete as soon as it was imposed; for naturalists like other men come and go, although science advances. It seemed obvious that the only logical plan was to set down all who merited inclusion, whatever their date; so my pillory extends from the mysterious Augustin to the naturalist of to-day - from the seventh century to the mid-twentieth. There perforce it stops. The study of nature will go on, but who its Irish apostles will be we cannot know. Morituri vos salutamus .

A word must be said as to the use of the term Irish naturalist. To admit only those of Irish birth would give a restricted and quite erroneous impression of the labourers whose work has resulted in our present knowledge of Irish natural science. It is true that it would include many notable names - John Templeton, William Thompson, A. H. Haliday, G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton and R. M. Barrington, E. Hull and G. H. Kinahan, C. B. Moffat and R. J. Ussher, W. Archer, N. Colgan, R. W. Scully, A. W. Stelfox - to mention a few; but it would exclude G. A. J. Cole, G. V. Du Noyer, Sir R. Griffith, J. B. Jukes, J. E. Portlock and W. J. Sollas among geologists, G. H. Carpenter, A. C. Haddon, E. W. L. Holt, R. F. Scharff, R. Southern among zoologists, and G. Dickie, J. T. Mackay, D. Moore, A. G. More, S. A. Stewart and R. Tate among botanists. Irish birth is naturally important in a book bearing the present title,whether a man’s work was done in Ireland or mostly elsewhere, and in the latter category there are many distinguished names, such as John Ball, Sir H. Hayden, Sir F. M’Coy, H. N. Martin, Thomas Oldham, Sir E. Sabine, Sir Hans Sloane, John Tyndall; these also need mention.

Apart from the qualification of Irish birth, the obvious course was to include all who have made a serious contribution to the sum of Irish natural science, mostly in the course of a long sojourn in that country, omitting usually the many others who were at no time resident here, and whose contributions, though often of high value, were the result of brief visits. Among those whose names are thus necessarily withheld may be mentioned L. E. Adams, Alfred Bell, H. and S. Brade-Birks, M. Foslie, Hilderic Friend, F. W. Gamble, H. and J. Groves, R. Gurney, Wheelton Hinde, O. E. Janson, A. S. Kennard, H. Wallis Kew, W. A. Lee, E. F. Linton, E. S. Marshall, H. W. Pugsley, T. Mellard Reade, T. Kenneth Rees, W. Moyle Rogers, W. E. Sharp, W. A. Shoolbred, A. Somerville, R. Standen, B. Tomlin, William West, A. J. Wilmott, Herbert Womersley, Col. Yerbury.

As regards resident naturalists, it was difficult to decide where to draw the line as their contributions to our knowledge become fewer or shorter, ending at last in possibly a single note published in some journal, or similar trivial indication of an interest in natural science. Considerations of space forbade following (for instance) Britten and Boulger’s Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists, in which even the sending of a few plants to Petiver or the making of a small herbarium is deemed cause for admission. I have endeavoured to include all whose contributions have been of definite service in advancing our knowledge of Irish zoology, botany or geology - but how far my judgment and choice may be acceptable to others, I cannot know. No two editors would have made precisely the same selection.

The boundary between pure and applied science is not always well marked, and so it has not been easy to separate economic zoology or botany from the systematic and geographical aspects of these subjects. But it is not intended to include here workers at plant and animal pests, diseases, or other pathological or agricultural aspects of natural science, nor at pure horticulture. This accounts for the absence from the list of such names as J. W. Besant, T. Carroll, T. Crook, T. Dillon, P. H. Gallagher, Paul Murphy, J. Reilly and others who have done yeoman service in the economic sphere.

Historically, one commences with that remarkable monk Augustin (not of Hippo), with his seventh-century environment and his twentieth century outlook, and we may bless the error by which his book was preserved among the writings of his great namesake. Then five hundred years pass before we come on the next landmark - the important treatise Topographia Hibernica that was written by Gerald de Barri, otherwise Giraldus Cambrensis, after he had visited Ireland as Prince John’s secretary in 1185. His book, a surprising medley of fact and fable, tells much concerning Irish animals and other things. Another gap ensues, and indeed continues till the herbalists became vocal - or at least scriptural - and Caleb Threlkeld issues his Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum in 1726. But it was not till the early nineteenth century that the natural sciences began to form definite subjects of enquiry in Ireland. Botany came first, by evolution from pharmacy, aided perhaps by the fact that plants were everywhere at hand, for admiration and study. J. T. Mackay, in his Flora Hibernica (1836), led the way to the systematic catalogue-book which is now the basis of field-work both in botany and zoology, and is known as a “Flora” or “Fauna.” William Thompson’s Natural History of Ireland was a great step forward, even though the author lived only to complete the three volumes devoted to the birds. Zoology indeed came close behind botany, so far at least as the animals of the land and of the shallower waters were concerned; but it was not until the nineteenth century that the exploration of the deep sea revealed fully the extent and variety of the animal kingdom. Geological study came last, since the rocks are mostly hidden from view, and their interpretation is often difficult. Geology does not lend itself to popular exploitation, like flower-collecting or butterfly-hunting; and lack of knowledge of its elements is still shown by the prevalence, even among intelligent persons, of the belief that Ireland is a land teeming with mineral wealth; to the geologist this is as vain a dream as a belief in the presence of cocoanut-palms or kangaroos in Connemara would be to the botanist or zoologist.

An obvious characteristic of this book is its incompleteness: not so much as to the list of names included - for it is hoped that almost all of those who have contributed in any material degree to our knowledge of the geology, zoology or botany of Ireland are mentioned - as in the inadequate notices that are given even of those who have done most for Irish natural science. This curtailment is necessitated by considerations of space and of expense. The book is intended merely as a “first aid” to the subject with which it deals. A very few leading points in the life and work of Irish naturalists alone find admission. In the references given at the end of each entry in the list much further information may frequently be obtained.

Space has not permitted of the addition to the brief biographical notices of any bibliographical material. For the published work of the persons included the obvious bibliographical sources should be consulted, such as the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography, the bibliography in Irish Topographical Botany and in Cybele Hibernica , the indexes to vol. 1-18 and 19-33 of the Irish Naturalist, the indexes to the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy and other Irish scientific societies and the lists of references appended to many of the papers therein, my own Bibliography of Irish Glacial and Post-glacial Geology (Proc. B.N.F.C.) and forthcoming Natural History of Ireland, and the lists and references included in books and papers on Irish geology, zoology, or botany.

SOME PERSONAL CONTACTS

I THINK my earliest contact with a man of science was when my grandfather, Robert Patterson, took me to Cultra on the shores of Belfast Lough to show me the Adder’s-tongue. By inclination he was a zoologist, but in those days naturalists were not specialists, and with a wide knowledge of the animal kingdom he was also well acquainted with local plants. My grandfather was a Belfast mill-furnisher, absorbed in business, but not so much absorbed as to prevent his writing books which brought him an unsought Fellowship of the Royal Society. After seventy-five years I can still see him - a man of middle height, and rather formal manner, pursuing his country rambles on Saturday afternoons in black frock-coat and top hat, and pointing out to us delighted children lady-birds and tree-creepers and “devil’s coach-horses” and strange chrysalises. He died in 1872, and I had been born in 1865, so that would fix my first introduction to Ophioglossum at about my sixth year. I can still remember my surprise that that little plant should be regarded as a fern at all; but from that day until the present the ferns have always been a familiar and much-loved group. This interest was strengthened by early contact with W. H. Phillips, of Holywood in Co. Down, with whom the “varieties” of British ferns had been a life-long study. In 1879 our family had spent the month of August at Ambleside. Most of the friends that we made there collected - or tried to collect - either fish (trout) or ferns. I sampled both pursuits, and after a week I plumped for the ferns, and hunted them vigorously. Next year we spent August at Castlerock in Derry, where I was excited to discover the curious aberration of Lady Fern known as cruciatae-pinnulae, and another that E. J. Lowe called cruciato-multifidum, which combined in one plant two different types of aberration - truncate pinnae and a much-branched tip. With these plants as peace-offerings I ventured to approach the elderly W. B. Phillips. My father had made me a member of the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club four years before, when I was aged eleven, and I had gone on a few of the Club’s excursions; but I was terrified of the big-wigs (most modest and friendly amateurs). My two Lady Ferns proved an open sesame, and Mr. Phillips and I became fast friends. I owe a great deal to his teaching; he had a marvellous eye for anything abnormal among the Filices, and E. J. Lowe’s British Ferns and where found (1908) shows how much pteridology owes to his industry and power of close observation; in the same book are enshrined my own modest findings. The Irish ferns did more for me than this, for they brought me into contact with the best of the English fern men; I explored Devonshire with Col. A. M. Jones of Bristol and E. J. Lowe of Chepstow, and owing to their mistaken belief in my ability I judged British ferns at the Temple Show when I was seventeen, making useful contacts with some of the great horticulturists of the ‘eighties.

My school-boy membership with the Belfast Field Club did not last, but I rejoined a few years later, and during College days, which were otherwise unproductive of fresh contacts with biologically-minded people, the Field Club was to me a second university, in which I formed friendships which, despite disparity of age, remained warm and intimate until my mentors “one by one crept silently to rest”; and through which I acquired a knowledge of field-lore, botanical, zoological and geological, which stood to me throughout life. Of these Belfast self-taught naturalist enthusiasts I have made brief mention elsewhere (The Way that I Went). Some of them ventured into print, and published papers on various aspects of local biology; others were content with what was almost equally important and productive the instilling into the minds of the young of an interest in natural history, and never-failing assistance and advice to those whose knowledge was less than their own. In the book referred to above I have paid tribute to the most remarkable of this group - Samuel Alexander Stewart, a true naturalist whose only fault was his overweening modesty; and I wrote also of that genial Cork quaker, Joseph Wright, whose enthusiasm for those wonderful organisms the Foraminifera proved so difficult to combine with that strict attention to business which alone gave him hope of material success. These and others whom I there mentioned - Wm. Swanston, linen manufacturer and geologist; F. J. Bigger, solicitor and archaeologist; Wm. Gray, Inspector under the Office of Works and in science jack-of-all-trades; Charles Bulla, commercial traveller and palaeontologist; S. M. Malcomson, physician and microscopist; Robert Bell, shipyard worker and geologist; R. J. Welch, photographer and fanatical crusader in the interests of Irish natural history; Canon Lett, botanist; W. J. Knowles, insurance agent and prehistorian - these and others, before whom I laid my ignorance and my hobble-de-hoy problems sixty or seventy years ago, stand wonderfully vivid in my mind to-day; I can still recall their figures and faces, and even their voices, as I can seldom do with most of the long procession of naturalists, in all ranks of life, whom it has been my privilege in later years to know. And what am I to say of that remarkable man, my old friend Robert Welch? I feel that the best I can do is to repeat the first paragraph of a notice of him that I wrote for the Irish Naturalists’ Journal at the time of his death; it epitomizes the man and his work better than anything I could write now:

“It is difficult to pen an appropriate appreciation or memorial of Robert Welch. Throughout his long life he was endowed with such an amazing fund of energy, pursued simultaneously and enthusiastically such a variety of interests, that it is not easy to fix his portrait within any frame. Ethnography, archaeology, geology, zoology, botany, heraldry, book-plates, all engaged his attention, and he was, as his profession required, a past master in the art of photography and all that appertained to it. But he will be remembered most not by solid contributions of new facts on any of these subjects - for his mercurial temperament seldom permitted him to delve deeply - but by the personal contribution of warm interest and helpfulness with which he infused everything that he did. He was generous to a fault; he sacrificed his time and energy to a quite unwarranted extent in helping others to discover and appreciate Ireland and all the natural wonders that it contains, be they large or small. Of his beautiful photographs, I am inclined to think that he gave away more than he sold. To assist the young naturalist or archaeologist was his special delight, and many of the present generation owe their first introduction to science to his contagious enthusiasm and painstaking help. His interests were as wide as the world itself, and they sustained him through a life which brought him a full share of earthly troubles. There was never a man who lived more fully, or appreciated life more; and now he is dead.”

My close association with the Belfast group was broken in 1893, when I resigned the secretaryship of the Belfast Field Club to take up residence in Dublin, a much greater centre of scientific activity than the northern city, but on a much more professional foundation, as was to be expected in the metropolis of a still undivided country. The difference in the scientific atmosphere of the two places was very marked. In Belfast the Field Club was an important local organization, a centre of scientific life. It had no sister-society except the already long-established Natural History and Philosophical Society, with its more formal and indoor functions; for natural science in the Queen’s College (the future Queen’s University) was concentrated in a single professorship, with practical work and field work quite undeveloped. In Dublin on the other hand the Field Club movement had begun only in 1886 and the Club was still in its boyhood, overshadowed as it was by the activities of the Royal Irish Academy, Royal Dublin Society, Royal Society of Antiquaries, and Dublin Microscopical Club, and practical biological teaching available in Trinity College and the Royal College of Science. Pushed into the secretaryship of the Dublin Field Club almost simultaneously with my arrival, the difference in outlook and atmosphere was striking; but the objects of the two Clubs as regards biology were identical, and one soon began to reap the benefits of contact with trained scientific minds, which replaced the sturdy amateurism of Belfast. The Royal College of Science especially was always a mainstay of the Dublin Field Club, and much of the biological work accomplished by its members was due to the precept and example of the three professors in the Faculty of Natural Science - Cole (geology), Haddon (zoology), and Johnson (botany). In Trinity College I soon discovered a kindred spirit in Sollas, who held the Chair of Geology, and we worked together at local glacial fauna and glacial deposits (then but little understood) till other work took him first to the Pacific to bore a coral atoll and then to the Professorship of Geology at Oxford. I have written elsewhere (A Populous Solitude, chap. viii) of a certain luncheon-table at which a dozen of us devotees of science congregated daily and discussed the affairs of the universe; to me, I think the youngest of the party, those meetings were a liberal education, from which I benefited greatly.

I find indeed that I have already, in the book mentioned and in The Way that I Went, written at least a little concerning many of the interesting naturalists whom I have met and worked with during the half-century and more of residence in the friendly city of Dublin - William Archer, R. M. Barrington, Maxwell Close, Grenville Cole, Nathaniel Colgan, W. S. Green, A. C. Haddon, W. J. Sollas, R. J. Ussher; but a little additional reminiscence is permissible, especially where a lighter vein can be invoked to compensate for the many serious pages which follow. Their scientific work has received due recognition in various quarters. I shall take advantage of a friendly intimacy to sketch a few episodes, grave or gay, which are not touched on in the scientific reports of their activities.

My old friend and teacher S. A. Stewart - errandboy, trunkmaker, museum curator, botanist, zoologist, geologist - was a man of Thomas Edwards’ type; when I was in my teens he was already an old man, gentle-spoken and modest and rather frail, but with a strain of toughness in his outlook where scientific field-work was concerned. While he and I were making a survey of the flora of the Mourne Mountains he deplored the necessity of returning to Newcastle or Hilltown each night for food and sleep; and when a promising piece of ground was discovered on a June evening he decided to take advantage of the shallow cave on Cove Mountain to spend the night there in order to get back to work at sunrise. But he had no more than prepared a bed of bracken when an old ram appeared and claimed it. The ram simply butted the intruder out, and Stewart spent the night in the heather: following on which he carried on all day, breakfastless and lunchless, only returning to Newcastle when the day’s work was over. And when exploring the lonely Sperrin Mountains in Tyrone he was benighted owing to too long lingering, and rain came on; he chose a grassy track among the stones where the ground was smooth, and spent the night walking up and down, soaked through; he reached Plumb Bridge, again dry but very ready for breakfast, some time after the sun had risen. Stewart seldom carried a rain-coat and though town-bred he dressed like a countryman, with black wide-awake hat, ancient tweeds, and often a boot-lace by way of tie; his little house in the Belfast Museum Yard was a refuge for all the stray cats of the neighbourhood, for he loved animals. He was a fine and critical naturalist, well versed in local geology, zoology and botany, and author of many papers on these subjects; and he was a court of appeal when any doubtful specimen was discovered, and even when a question arose as to English phraseology or spelling. He had pungent humour too, as exemplified in a letter written to Wm. Swanston when he was examining Rathlin Island, and visited “Bruce’s Castle” there: “Poor Bruce, he was no use, he couldn’t keep his crown in the family, but had to let the noble Stewarts succeed to him. His spider is played out. The Stewart has got it also. All bosh about its perseverance. Let it try its thirteen times now to get out of my bottle. It won’t do.” He well deserved his A.L.S., and the Civil List pension that eventually came to him. Appreciative notices of him and his work are referred to elsewhere.

Belfast can boast a second noteworthy “workingman naturalist” in Robert Bell, rivetter in Harland and Wolff’s ship-building yard. A quiet and retiring man, he usually carried out his excellent mineralogical and palaeontological work alone, and few realized the surprising knowledge that he possessed of Antrim rocks. Bell was another of the men who owed their honourable position in the ranks of science to the stimulus of the democratic Field Club of Belfast. His talents were inherited by his son, whose untimely death removed one of the most brilliant young scientists of Trinity College, Dublin.

Canon Lett, William Gray, Canon Grainger and John Vinycomb were among other senior members of the Belfast Field Club when I was a boy among them. Lett was both botanist and archaeologist, and in botany nothing came amiss to him, from the highest to the lowest plants; but he spread his net rather too widely, and sometimes failed to master thoroughly the intricacies of some of the more difficult groups which he loved to collect; nor did he at all appreciate any hint to this effect. He and I had several passages-at-arms over flowering plants, but always remained the best of friends. His industry and helpfulness were beyond praise.

Not quite satisfactory for the tyro was William Gray, who was jealous of his reputation as an all-round specialist in the geology, zoology and archaeology of Ulster. His boasted knowledge was really only skin-deep, but he made a grand guide for the Belfast region, knowing at least the outside of all that was worth seeing. Canon Grainger was a different type - a collector of everything, so that his roomy vicarage near Ballymena was a crowded museum. Acquisition with him was a virtue, and any object was welcome. But being of an uncritical and credulous type of mind, he was often imposed on, and his large collection of local stone implements, for instance, was especially valuable as a study in the gentle art of forgery.

In the foregoing paragraphs I feel that I may have emphasized the less admirable qualities of these old friends of my youth; but their industry and. enthusiasm and helpfulness needed no praise, and their wide local knowledge in things relating to natural science was such as is found but rarely in the workers of to-day. The increase of specialization often limits the field of view, and we tend more and more to get shut up in separate watertight compartments; which is a pity - but unavoidable.

When I came from Belfast to Dublin in 1893 I at once became aware of the difference in this respect - a more advanced standard of knowledge, but coupled often with a less intimate acquaintance with the animals and plants in relation to their surroundings, and of topographical detail as applied to the fauna and flora. For Belfast naturalists the laboratory did not exist; in Dublin it counted for a great deal. In both, the microscope was in demand; but in Belfast it was mostly a toy with which to view all sorts of beautiful objects, while in Dublin it was a tool.

Some of my most valued Dublin friendships were already made before I left Belfast, due mainly to the advent of men like A. C. Haddon and Grenville Cole to give courses of University Extension lectures. Of these two excellent companions, and also of W. J. Sollas, I have already attempted a brief sketch’(A Populous Solitude, chap. VIII. 1941.) in connection with a certain lunch-table where a number of us used to foregather during the last decade of last century. And since the present book is a compilation rather than an original work, I repeat here what I wrote then (l.c.) even though it infringes slightly on the notices of these which appear in the later part of the present book.

" W. J. Sollas, then Professor of Geology at Trinity, was a contrast to his colleague Fitzgerald in many ways - a Birmingham man, small and dapper, with an ardent disposition and a brilliant intellect. He loved debate and disputation over vexed questions in all regions of science, for he was versatile to a degree. . . . He enlivened us here for fourteen years. . . . I was with him on his last Irish field-work (eskers and bog-slides, and also in studies of the glacial beds around Dublin, and in the Central Plain). Sollas was rapid, both intellectually and physically, and I often had my work cut out for me to keep pace with him in either sphere when we were together. He was impatient too. I remember a meeting of the Geological Society at Burlington House, when Sir Henry Howarth, author of The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, was ‘blethering’ (to use Sollas’s term) about the Ice Age. Sollas twice interrupted him, in spite of a friendly warning from the Chair, following on which I had to grab him by the coat-tails and hold him in his seat to prevent a more emphatic protest on his part and consequent reprimand. A more lively occasion was when he and I were going to Leix to examine eskers for remains of sea-shells - for the theory of the marine origin of these puzzling ridges was still well to the fore - and we returned to our compartment to find a large forbidding person, who looked like a bruiser, occupying Sollas’s seat, and the hat which he had left as a sign of ownership lying on the floor. Sollas protested; the man surlily refused to budge. ‘No gentleman would behave like that,’ snapped Sollas. ‘I don’t see any gentleman here,’ was the retort. Whereupon Sollas flew at him, and I had to drag him off by main force. Another passenger offered him a seat, and as the train pulled out of Kingsbridge the two sat in opposite corners, like boxers in the ring during their brief intervals of inactivity, glowering at one another. But as the big man left the train at Kildare he deliberately trod on Sollas’s toes. Sollas bounced up like a Jack-in-the-box, but the big man quietly pushed him back into his seat mil beamed at him: ‘Good-bye now,’ he said, ‘you’re a grand little game-cock.’

W. W. Watts summed up Sollas’s character excellently in an obituary notice in Nature: ‘A lovable and constant friend, a gallant and doughty foe, a sprightly debater and formidable controversialist, a daring climber and diver, an omnivorous reader, an investigator of untiring energy and unimpeachable accuracy, and, whether as host or guest, a genial and most courteous gentleman.’

There was Haddon too, then a zoologist - he occupied the Chair of Zoology in the Royal College of Science for Ireland for twenty-one years from 1880 - afterwards a distinguished ethnographer, and lecturer in that subject at Cambridge and later at University College, London; a man of tremendous vitality and energy and good humour. In Ireland, inspired by the results of the “Challenger” voyage, he originated the several dredging expeditions to the deep waters off Kerry that were carried out under the leadership of W. S. Green, as well as work in Dublin Bay; he undertook craniological studies in western Ireland; and expended his superabundant zeal in ethnographical expeditions to New Guinea and Torres Straits. He found in ethnography many problems more pressing than any in zoology, on account of rapidly changing conditions among savage tribes, and in his later years threw his whole energy into the study of human races. At our luncheon-table he was a boisterous talker and a humorous debater, and his departure for his native England in 1901 left a conspicuous gap in the scientific circle in Dublin.

Of Haddon I quote from a short sketch based on his Dublin days which I contributed to Mrs. Quiggin’s Haddon the Head-hunter (Cambridge, 1942):

“He was a vigorous, restless, boisterous person, impatient, full of laughter, with a rapid, rather stuttering speech, the result of his impatience. His hair was jet black, worn long, with a large lock dangling over his sallow face, and he walked rapidly with an untidy gait and a slight stoop. If you met him in the street he would probably be dressed in an old velveteen jacket, trousers baggy at the knees and fringed at the bottom, and an old hat stuck on anyhow, and he would be posting along at about four and a half miles an hour. He rather liked shocking prudish people - who according to modern standards, abounded in those days - and those whom he thought insincere or silly often thought him rude. People who knew him slightly found him an uncomfortable person, but all who knew him well loved him, he was so loyal and sincere. There were a good many people he just couldn’t be bothered with, and I fancy he let them know it pretty plainly, but I don’t think he had any enemies”.

Grenville Cole was a colleague of Haddon’s at the Dublin College of Science, and held the Chair of Geology there from 1890 till his death in 1924. To that post, in 1905, there was added the Directorship of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He also came to us from England - a Londoner who obtained his scientific education at the Royal School of Mines. He was possessed of a fluent and vivid pen, and did much to advance the knowledge of Irish geology, as well as to popularize a rather difficult subject by many lectures and a good deal of writing suitable for beginners. Small and fair, with manners of singular charm, he made himself known and loved throughout the land of his adoption. Of the importance of two aspects of his work he was especially conscious: first, the large contribution that knowledge of other countries could make towards the elucidation of Irish problems; hence he travelled extensively, and had always interesting parallels and contrasts ready at hand, drawn from many lands, for the illustration of this point or that; and secondly, the full recognition of the labours of his predecessors in the geological field, and a meticulous care in acknowledging amply their work.

At our luncheon-table his was a welcome and gracious presence, and the quaint quips and cranks with which he varied his contributions to serious discussion added much hilarity to our daily parliament. He was courageous too, for in later life he was cruelly crippled with rheumatism, yet his cheerfulness and humour and wide interest in events lasted till the end, which came when he was sixty-five years of age. For over thirty years I was in close touch with him, and my indebtedness to him for instruction and assistance and helpful companionship grew with each succeeding season.

Early in my acquaintance with Cole, he married Blanche Vernon of Clontarf Castle. I was his best man, the only person present except the clergyman and the bride’s mother. This was in the days of the cycling boom which followed the introduction of the “safety bicycle,” and both bride and groom were earnest addicts of the wheel. A lady interested in the affairs of others asked me if it was a fact that the couple had ridden together to church, and away again as man and wife. I said it was the truth, but not the whole truth. They had cycled together to the church, and as there were no steps at the door had ridden on up the aisle, deposited a bicycle against the altar-rails on either hand, been duly married, and mounting their machines again had departed for Connemara and connubial bliss and felicity. The good lady accepted the story in its entirety.

Two veterans whom I was privileged to meet and work with in my early Dublin days were Maxwell Close and William Archer. Close was Treasurer to the Royal Irish Academy when I became Librarian to the same body. He had long ceased his brilliant geological work, but loved to talk about it, and took an interest in the work that Sollas and I were doing at the Dublin drifts, and especially in our interpretation of the Killiney beds, now (like his own deep-submergence theory) no longer tenable. He was then over seventy, rather frail for his age, with a quaintly humorous expression on his kindly face, and a hesitating and singularly courteous and modest manner. During his long residence in Ireland Maxwell Close held no incumbency, but he rendered much service to the Church of Ireland. Possessed of means, he was one of the most generous of men, and many persons in need benefited by his private benefactions. I remember his telling me, with a mock-woebegone face, of two elderly sisters in very straitened circumstances and apparently moribund, on whom, expecting early demise, he had settled a handsome quarterly allowance. “That was fifteen years ago,” he exclaimed tragically, “and their health improves all the time!” Grenville Cole referred to him as “one of the most familiar figures, one of the keenest thinkers, and one of the gentlest and yet most stimulating personalities among the ranks of Irish men of science.”

Archer was my chief in the National Library of Ireland during my first three years of service there - a rather dreamy man, prematurely old (for he took no care of his health), living in a small house in Hatch-street with a scapegrace young nephew and a would-be housekeeper, and spending his off-time chiefly in the reading-room of the Royal Dublin Society next door to the National Library. He forgot even his meals sometimes. Once when he had gone on leave a marked odour began to pervade the Librarian’s office, which grew so insistent as the days went by that the Head Attendant and I were forced to investigate. We eventually found in his private drawer two herrings, very much the worse for wear!

Two other veterans whose work was done before my day, but who were still active members of the Dublin scientific coterie when I came there were Samuel Haughton and G. H. Kinahan. I learned a good deal from contact with them of the scientific life and work of the Dublin of the preceding half-century, and listened to reminiscences of Portlock and Griffith and Jukes and other giants of a hundred years ago.

Around the name of Samuel Haughton innumerable good stories used to cling - many of them now no doubt gone. One of them, as a supporter of the Dublin Zoo - in which Haughton was much interested - I venture to repeat. While visiting the collection of animals at Bronx Park, New York, he became a bit bored by the record of perfection which he received on all sides, so he enquired about the financial aspect of the institution: how did they pay for their obviously princely expenditure? So-and-so, he was told, but of course the main source of income was gate-money. “What ?” asked Haughton, “do you mean you charge people to get in?” “Of course; don’t you?” “Oh! no - we let them in free; then we enlarge one of our celebrated lions and charge them to get out! We do better that way.”

In contrast to Haughton’s sparkle, his fellow geologist Kinahan had a good deal of the bulldog in him. I remember a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy when, on some point of order, Kinahan became so persistent and truculent that the Secretary, J. H. Bernard (afterwards Archbishop and Provost of Trinity) moved “That Mr. Kinahan be not heard”: which was carried, and the combatant retired growling and defiant.

R. F. Scharff was an old and valued friend, and a useful adviser, for he always retained touch with continental affairs and had a wide acquaintance among European naturalists. I owed to his advice my desertion of Belfast and civil engineering for Dublin and a library career, and never had cause to regret it, for a post in a large library especially rich in scientific literature offered advantages to a biologist not to be obtained from assisting in the task of bringing Mourne Mountain water to Belfast - which was then the alternative prospect. In his long administration of the Zoological Section of the National Museum in Dublin he was a little rigid, and “verboten” came more easily to his lips than “do it if you like.” But in council, and in private dealings, his wide acquaintance with men and places made him a very informed adviser.

Of Nathaniel Colgan, a brilliant man who consistently throughout life kept his light under a bushel, I have written elsewhere (The Way that I Went). In my earliest Dublin years I proposed to the Field Club a botanical survey to collect material for the eventual production of a Flora of County Dublin, only to learn, what few local botanists had any inkling of, that Colgan had been hard at work on this plan for some years. He even allowed me to help him in the search for rare plants, and by degrees came out of the obscurity in which he had entrenched himself, and became known and loved by all of us. His reason for this secrecy as regards his Flora was a rather strange one - he feared that, if his intention were known, he would be supplied by well-meaning helpers with erroneous records which would give much trouble to correct and would be the cause of unpleasant wrangling. One of his best friends, Primate D’Arcy, wrote of him “His keen intellect, wonderfully wide reading, subtle irony, and felicity of expression threw light on everything, and made the commonest experiences enjoyable. He ought to have been a great man, famous in the world. It was only his strange self-suppression and too great modesty which prevented it. He was not easy to know, but the knowledge was well worth having.”

Another likeable man, difficult to know on account of his shyness, was A. H. Foord, the palaeontologist, and Librarian to the Royal Dublin Society. He really lived in terror of his friends, but although my exterior had little to recommend it, he took to me, and we became intimate. In the end, he had the wisdom to marry, and to marry suitably, and the world ceased to be so full of terrors as it was wont to be.

C. B. Moffat was another shy man, but bold as a lion where danger to his beloved birds was threatened by “sportsmen” or “Game Preservation” societies or the ignorance of gardeners or farmers or faddists. Suaviter in modo was always his method, but he was prompt to invoke the law when the law was contravened. As Secretary of the Irish Society for the Protection of Birds he performed invaluable service for many years, a custodianship which was terminated only by his death. He was the most brilliant naturalist - in the Gilbert White sense - that Ireland has produced. Within a most unimpressive head he carried a remarkable brain. His powers of observation and his patience when observing were equalled only by his reasoned and logical deductions from the facts observed. I knew him for half a century and found him ever the same - courteous, tolerant, humorous, and ever ready to help from the amazing store of natural history knowledge which he possessed.

R. M. Barrington and H. C. Hart I class together as the most able of the band of botanists whom A. G. More marshalled for the particular purpose of exploration in connection with the second edition of Cybele Hibernica, which appeared in 1898, three years after More’s death. Yet, except for their strong interest in natural history, their indomitable energy and zeal, and the advantages which accrued from belonging to old “landed gentry,” they had little in common. Barrington was an ideal companion, full of enterprise, originality, humour and a never-failing friendliness: Hart was somewhat dictatorial, impatient, difficult to handle. I have always rejoiced in the story Barrington tells (Irish Nat., 17, 249.) of a rainy day spent with Hart, when neither of them would give way. I venture to tell it again, in Barrington’s words: - “By appointment he (Hart) turned up at Fassaroe one dreadful day to botanize on the cliffs around Powerscourt Waterfall, and to hear, if possible, the Wood Wren. Well knowing that if the expedition failed, the incident would for years be a theme for ridicule, a few slices of bread were hastily wrapped up, and we started in torrents of rain, absolute silence being observed regarding the atmospheric conditions. Both wet to the skin “in no time,” Hart deliberately kept walking among the shrubs, briars, and long grass by the river’s edge, so as to discourage his companion. To prove utter indifference to moisture, the writer walked into the river and sat down on a submerged stone and began to eat lunch. Hart, with the utmost nonchalance, and without saying a word, did likewise. Saturation was soon complete. All rivalry ceased, and friendship prevailed during the remainder of the day.” Barrington was a “friend of all the world.” I knew him for twenty years, and rejoiced in the acquaintance. On the two trips to Rockall in 1896 the intimacy invoked by life on a small steamer added to the pleasure. With Hart the case was different, since correspondence mostly replaced conversation, he being in Donegal and I in Dublin; his letters were inclined to be peppery, for he looked on me as a young interloper, meddling in botanical affairs already settled. But he helped me freely with a lot of detail regarding his wide-flung botanical explorations in Ireland. In the issue, a rift arrived when, at the end of a long letter regarding some of his records, he squeezed in a small postscript inviting me to come and see his rhododendrons at their best. In replying in a similarly lengthy letter, by an unlucky chance I failed to answer the postscript, and promptly received a missive of such eloquence that our correspondence ceased abruptly and for ever.

To the memory of W. S. Green I have already paid a humble tribute (The Way that I Went). He was a man for whose energy, enterprise, courage and scientific imagination I had a sincere admiration; and I saw him at his best, at sea under difficult circumstances, during oceanic dredging and attempts to land on tempestuous Rockall. He was resourceful, and daring almost to rashness, as witness his adventures on Mount Cook in New Zealand; and his whimsical humour never forsook him. I recall him staggering down the companion ladder of the little “Flying Falcon” in a full gale, and surveying the dishevelled cabin and his deep-sea dredging colleagues in a state of collapse. A sudden storm had come up; Green had spent the night with the captain on the bridge, in great pain on account of a heavy fall; and now, surveying the scene in the grey dawn, his only comment was; “I have always thought that if the hippopotamus had been shown his photograph before he was created, he would have been able to suggest some important improvements.” That was Green all over. I have had no friend whose death I deplored more. Of R. J. Ussher, ornithologist and cave-digger, I have written in the same volume (The Way that I Went) - a timid man one would say on meeting him, yet without fear when dangling on the end of a rope on a tall cliff in his earlier egg-hunting days. His extraordinary pertinacity and devotion to scientific research were well displayed in later years, when he spent week after week in cave-digging, collecting fossil bones all day from wet clay and stalagmite by candle-light, and sleeping in a cramped and leaky hut. I lay out with him the whole of one night in the heather on the Great Saltee, when we tried to time the arrival and departure of the nocturnal Manx Shearwaters, and during the long sleepless hours I learned much of his philosophy of life. He was over seventy then, but thought nothing of a “night out.”

One of the few naturalists with whom I ever had a disagreement was F. W. Burbridge, Curator of the Botanic Garden of Trinity College. This arose from his continued attempts to enhance the native flora of Ireland by scattering in suitable places the seeds of plants not indigenous to the country. G. H. Carpenter joined with me in endeavouring to convince him of the high undesirability of this practice, as tending to make more difficult the by no means easy task of studying the natural migrations of our plants. “Forgers of nature’s signature” was the epithet Carpenter applied to the mostly well-meaning people who indulged in this practice, not realizing what difficulties they might be creating for the student of geographical botany - and equally of zoology. But the amiable Burbridge could not see that he was doing anything undesirable. It may be added that although Dublin possesses a larger number of alien plants in its flora than any other Irish county - due to its long and varied human history and great choice of habitat - no species now growing in the area can be definitely assigned to Burbridge’s well-meant activities.

With G. H. Carpenter himself I had the privilege of a long acquaintance. It began with the founding of the Irish Naturalist in 1892, of which he and I were the first editors, and close association ceased only on his appointment to the keepership of the Manchester Museum in 1923. He and I differed widely in temperament and in our outlook on many matters, but that merely gave a more balanced policy to our editorship, and never disturbed a cordial friendship.

These brief reminiscences of bygone fellow-workers in natural history refer only to some of those with whom I have worked in Ireland. Of the many others both at home and abroad from whose friendly intercourse I have benefited this is not the place to write.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

A. LEITH ADAMS
d. 1882
Andrew Leith Adams, M.A., belonged to a Scottish family. He became an army surgeon. Retiring in 1873, he was appointed Professor of Zoology in the Royal College of Science in Dublin, and in 1878 Professor of Natural History in Queen’s College, Cork. He was elected F.R.S. in 1872. He early became interested in fossil mammals, and getting in touch with R. J. Ussher and G. H. Kinahan, published, partly in conjunction with them, a number of valuable papers on the Quaternary mammals of Ireland. His largest scientific work was his Monograph of the British Fossil Elephants (Palwontolog. Soc., 1877-81). Other books dealt with the natural history of India, Egypt, Malta and Canada.

Dict. Nat. Biogr., 1, 94. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 49 (Proc.), 39.

“Migration of Birds” in Science for all ed. By Robert Brown FLS FRGS ca. late 1800s

JOHN ADAMS
b. 1872 (20/1/1872 – 9/2/1948)
John Adams is an Antrim man, born near Ballymena. He studied at Queen’s College, Belfast, and St. John’s College, Cambridge, taking the M.A. degree. In Dublin he held botanical teaching posts in the Royal College of Science for Ireland and elsewhere. He then went to Canada as Assistant Dominion Botanist, from which position he has now retired. He wrote A Student’s Illustrated Irish Flora (1931) and several books on Canadian and general botany; also papers, published by the Royal Irish Academy, giving a census of Irish Algae, Lichens, and (with G. H. Pethybridge) Fungi; other papers, in the Irish Naturalist, dealt with the longevity of seeds, etc.

Who’s Who. Personal knowledge.

NATHANIEL H. ALCOCK
1871-1913
N. H. Alcock was a Dublin man, and graduated (B.A., M.D.) with high honours in the University of his native city. He studied in Germany, taught in the Medical Schools of Manchester, Dublin, and elsewhere, and in 1911 was appointed to the Chair of Physiology in McGill University, Montreal, at which place he died. While in Ireland he did useful and interesting work in zoology, and alone or in collaboration with C. B. Moffat published in the Irish Naturalist a series of papers on the habits of native bats, which greatly extended our knowledge concerning these remarkable mammalia. Elsewhere appeared important papers on the nervous system.

Irish Nat., 22, 144. Who was Who, 1897-1916. Personal Knowledge.

WILLIAM THOMAS ALEXANDER
1818-1872
Alexander was a Cork-man, and a surgeon in the navy. He made a contribution “Fungi of Cloyne” to the Phytologist (4, 727), and collected a good deal in China and Loochoo. His name appears as “H.J.A.” in Power’s Botanists’ Guide for the County of Cork and as “T. Anderson” in the Journal of Botany, 1848.

Britten and Boulger, ed. 2, 4.

THOMAS ALLIN
d. ? 1909
Allin was born at Midleton, Co. Cork. He took the B.D. degree at Dublin University in 1859, and, entering the church, held curacies in turn in Counties Galway, Carlow and Cork between 1864 and 1877; subsequently he lived at Weston-super-Mare. Allin contributed notes on the plants mainly of County Cork to the Journal of Botany, 1871-1874, and in 1883 issued a little book The Flowering Plants and Ferns of the County Cork, published at Weston-super-Mare. His botanical contributions show that he was an active and accurate observer

Cybele Hibernica, ed. 2, xix. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 5.

GEORGE JAMES ALLMAN
1812-1898
G. J. Allman was born at Cork, educated at Belfast, and took his B.A. and M.D. degrees in Dublin in 1844. He turned from the Bar and from medicine to study natural science, and devoted his life to researches on marine invertebrates, notably the Coelenterata and Polyzoa; his papers and reports on these (as in the “Challenger” series) are of first importance, and especially his monographs on the gymnoblastic hydroids and on the fresh-water Polyzoa. He was appointed Professor of Botany in Dublin University in 1844, in succession to his father William Allman (q.v.) and in 1856 became Regius Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh, from which post he retired in 1870 to live at Weybridge, where he died. He was elected F.R.S. in 1854, and was President of the Linnean Society (1874-1881) and of the British Association (1879); he received the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1878.

WILLIAM ALLMAN
1776-1846
Born in Jamaica of a Waterford mother, his parents removed to Ireland in 1780, and their son graduated M.A. and M.D. in Dublin University. He practised medicine at Clonmel, and was in 1809 appointed Professor of Botany in Dublin University. He was a friend of Robert Brown, and in consequence of this intimacy arranged his lectures in 1812 on the Natural System, being the first professor in the British Isles to do so. He retired in 1844, being succeeded by his son (3. J. Allman (q.v.) The genus Allmania (Aramentacae) was named after him by Robert Brown.

Dict. Nat. Biogr. 1, 335. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 5.

WILLIAM ANDREWS
1802-1880
Andrews was born at Chichester, but came to Ireland, and was a founder and leading member, and ultimately President, of the Natural History Society of Dublin. He was interested in both zoology and botany, and his best discovery was the now famous Spotted Slug of Kerry, Geomalacus maculosus, elsewhere found only in the Peninsula. Among plants he claimed to have discovered in Kerry Saxifraga Andreu’sii, which was named after him; but that plant is known to be a garden hybrid, with one of the S. Aizoon group, unknown as natives of Ireland, as one of its parents. T. H. Corry has given expression (Journ. Bot. 21, 181) to the doubts which hang over this and others of his records. He was especially interested in Irish fishes and filmy ferns.

Dict. Nat. Biogr., 1, 409. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 9.

THOMAS ANTISELL
1817-1893
Antisell was born in Dublin. He was Lecturer in botany in the School of Medicine in Peter-street, and published a Manual of Agricultural Chemistry in 1845, and Outlines of Irish Geology in 1846. Politically he was a prominent Young Irelander, on which account presumably he emigrated to America after 1848, to become Government Geologist for California and Arizona and to fill other scientific posts, and to publish many papers.

Irish Book-lover, 6, 102, 118. Britten and Boulger, ed. 2, 8.

WILLIAM ARCHER
1830-1897
William Archer was the eldest son of Rev. Richard Archer, belonging to an old Wexford family. His early attraction to natural history, and especially to minute and obscure forms of animal and vegetable life, was shown by his association from youth with Eugene O'Meara, E. P. Wright, W. Frazer, and George Porte. They founded in 1849 the Dublin Microscopical Club (q.v.), composed of twelve members, who met monthly for the exhibition and demonstration of objects suitable for study. From 1864 the proceedings of the Club were reported in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, and many of Archer's remarkable discoveries were published there, relating to Protozoa, desmids, and other groups. Many valuable contributions appeared in the Proceedings of the Natural. History Society of Dublin, of which he was a leading member. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1875 without candidature or knowledge on his part, the application and usual expenses being made and met by personal friends in testimony of their esteem for him. In 1876 he forsook his previous business activities, connected with mining enterprises in Ireland, to undertake the duties of Librarian to the Royal Dublin Society; most of the valuable collection of books then stored in Leinster House became, in 1877, the nucleus on which the extensive collections in the National Library of Ireland were built up; Archer was its first Librarian. He retired in 1895. " Archer's scientific skill, knowledge and capacity were, according to the testimony of competent judges, out of all proportion to his public reputation. He was not only an indefatigable worker, but possessed in a marked degree that scientific imagination which is essential to the highest results in research."

AUGUSTIN
655
Augustin is to be reckoned as the first Irish naturalist. He wrote, in the year 655, a remarkable book, Liber de mirabilibus Sanctae Scripturae. This work was for long attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo, and to this fortunate error its preservation is due, as it became included in St. Augustine's writings, and forms an Appendix to vol. III of his collected works, 1837. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus both knew that his style was different from St. Augustine's, and the Benedictine editors said that the author “videtur se gente Anglum sive Hibernum indicare”; it was left to Bishop Reeves to give final proof of his Irish nationality. But who he was or where he was domiciled is not known. His book deals with natural phenomena from a standpoint singularly modern - tides, changes in the distribution of land and sea, island faunas, etc.; and as Sir D'Arcy Thompson has written, many of his arguments might have been put forward by Darwin or Edward Forbes or Lyell. Augustin lived twelve hundred years before his time. To the zoologist, the list he gives of Irish wild animals is of much interest.

C. C. BABINGTON
1808-1895
The name of Charles Cardale Babington, M.A., F.R.S., Professor of Botany at Cambridge, 1861-1895, has an Irish connection not so much on account of certain field-work done in that country as by reason of his paper “Hints towards a Cybele Hibernica,” read before the Dublin University Zoological and Botanical Association in 1859. In this he put forward a proposed division of Ireland for biological purposes into twelve " districts " - a plan adopted in both editions of Cybele Hibernica and in some subsequent publications. He was interested in the distribution of. Irish plants, and refers to them in thirty different papers.

Dict. Nat. Biogr., Suppl. I, 90. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 12.

KATHERINE SOPHIA BAILY - see Lady Kane

WILLIAM HELLIER BAILY
1819-189
Baily was born at Bristol, and became Assistant Curator of the Museum there in 1837. In 1857 after some years of service as draughtsman and Assistant Geologist on the English survey, he came to Dublin as Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of Ireland, and worked in that capacity until his death. He was an excellent draughtsman and lithographer, and his hundreds of artistic and accurate figures of fossils have helped greatly the study of bygone forms of life.

W. A. F. BALFOUR-BROWNE
b. 1874
William Alexander Francis Balfour-Browne, M.A., was born in London, took his M.A. degree at Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1898, but returned to Oxford to study zoology. After several years work in marine laboratories he came to Belfast in 1906 as Naturalist to the Ulster Fisheries and Biology Association and Assistant in Biology in Queen's College, and afterwards Lecturer in Botany in Queen's University; subsequently he held zoological posts at Cambridge and the Imperial College of Science. He has written many books and papers on insects, and while in Belfast and subsequently he specialized on the water-beetles.

Who's Who. Personal knowledge.

ANNE ELIZABETH BALL
1808-1872
Miss Ball belonged to Youghal. She studied seaweeds, assisted W. H. Harvey in his Phycologia Britannica, and sent Algae to the herbarium of Dublin University. Harvey dedicated the genus Ballia to her in 1840. She was a sister of Robert Ball, q.v.

Britten and Boulger, ed. 2, 17. Renouf in Irish Nat. Journ., 3, 238.

JOHN BALL
1818-1889
John Ball, LL.D., F.R.S., naturalist, politician, alpine climber, was born in Dublin, son of a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. He travelled far, and wrote especially on physical and geographical science and on the flora of the Alps, which mountain-range he knew and loved since childhood. He was the first President of the Alpine Club. He published very little connected with Ireland, where his work was mainly political.

ROBERT BALL
1802-1857
Robert Ball was born at Cobh (Queenstown) and rather against his will found himself at the age of 25 in the Under Secretary's Office in Dublin, where he worked until 1852. Once free of official trammels he devoted himself with vigour to natural history, living in Dublin, taking a leading part in the work of the scientific societies there, and maintaining an active correspondence with Edward Forbes, William Thompson, Robert Patterson. He was appointed Director of the Museum in Trinity College in 1844, and presented to that institution his valuable natural history collections, mainly Irish; Dublin University conferred on him the degree of LL.D. He became Secretary of the Queen's University of Ireland in 1851, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. To manyy people the name of his eldest son, Sir Robert Ball, Astronomer Royal, is more familiar than his own.

Dict. Nat. Biogr. 3, 77. Webb: Compend. Irish Biogr., 7.

VALENTINE BALL
1843-1895
Valentine Ball, C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., was the second son of Robert Ball, LL.D. (q.v.) and brother of Sir Robert S. Ball, mathematician and Astronomer Royal, and of Sir Charles B. Ball, Bart., M.D. Entering Trinity College, Dublin in 1857, he passed his degree examination in 1864, but did not graduate till 1872, when he took the B.A. and M.A. degrees by accumulation. In the former year he was appointed to the Geological Survey of India, on which he worked, often under arduous conditions, till 1881, his duties being especially concerned with the Indian coal-fields and other economic deposits. He came home to succeed Dr. S. Haughton as Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the University of Dublin. Meanwhile the Government had taken over from the Royal Dublin Society several of its important educational activities and formed them into separate but allied institutions. Its museum became the Science and Art Museum (now National Museum of Ireland), its Library the National Library of Ireland, its Botanic Garden first the Royal and then the National Botanic Garden of Ireland. Ball left his university post to assume in 1883 the directorship of this Froup of cultural centres - the " Science and Art Institutions ' as they were called - . his special interest being the Museum, the foundation stone of which had not yet been laid when he was appointed. In the Museum and for the Museum he laboured incessantly for over twelve years, when he had to resign owing to ill-health.

His writings were extensive and varied, extending into many branches of science. The bulk of his work naturally saw the light through the official publications of the Geological Survey of India.

G. E. H. BARRETT-HAMILTON
1871-1914
Major Gerald Edwin Hamilton Barrett-Hamilton, B.A., author of the great (and unfortunately unfinished) History of British Mammals, was born in India of Irish parents, who returned and settled at Kilmanock in Wexford when the boy was three years old. Before he was ten he had begun taking natural history notes. He went to Harrow, spending summer holidays botanizing at home under the encouragement of A. G. More; passed through Cambridge with distinction, and in 1896-97 was engaged as Commissioner on the British Bering Sea Fur Seal enquiry. After a few years devoted to work on European mammals, he fought through the South African war in the Royal Irish Rifles. The next ten years were devoted to agriculture at home and his book on British mammals. This had reached its 14th part, when he was appointed by the Colonial Office and the Natural History Museum to investigate the indiscriminate slaughter of whales in the Antarctic. He died of pneumonia there, in South Georgia, in 1914.

In his mammal work he was a thorough-going “splitter,” recognising minute differences which he considered important, and giving names to all; he did not care whether his splits were called subspecies, races, or phases, but insisted that they required recognition.

A list of his writings is appended to the notice of him in the Irish Naturalist, quoted below.

Irish Nat., 23, 81, portrait. Personal knowledge.

R. M. BARRINGTON
1849-1915
Richard Manliffe Barrington was born at the family residence of Fassaroe, Co. Wicklow. He was a delicate boy, with a strong leaning towards natural science. His earliest published note (Zoologist, 1866), concerned the food of the Wood-pigeon, and from that time until his death he was busy at zoological and to a less extent botanical field-work. He took degrees - M.A., LL.B. - at Dublin University, and was called to the Bar, but preferred the open-air life that he got as a land valuer and farmer. While still an undergraduate he came under the influence of A. G. More, which led to his reports on the flora of Lough Ree, Lough Erne, Ben Bulben, Tory Island, and the Blaskets (all published by the Royal Irish Academy) - work needed for the second edition of Cybele Hibernica, and carried out with scrupulous care. But his main interest, especially in later years, was ornithology, and the work with which his name is especially associated was his marshalling of the Irish lighthouse and lightship keepers into a far-flung body of observers of the innumerable birds which are seen or taken at these favourable points; much of the expense of this elaborate enquiry was borne by Barrington himself. The results were published in the well-known voluminous work The Migration of Birds as observed at Irish Lighthouses and Lightships (1900). Barrington's energy in the domain of ornithology was unbounded; he visited, often more than once, the most remote islands off the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland, and many more distant places. He was one of the leaders of the Rockall expedition of 1896. Incidentally, his bird enquiries led to the amassing of a great collection of specimens (wing and leg) of birds sent up by the light-keepers, including a large number of unique Irish occurrences; this collection is now in the National Museum.

He was keenly interested also in the native mammals; in agriculture he farmed a large area at Fassaroe, and indeed worked in every subject relating to Irish science and economics. C. B. Moffat's notice of him quoted below (Irish Nationalist) gives a list of his writings. Of his alpine climbs and other feats of enterprise and endurance this is not the place to write.

RICHARD BARTON
fl. 1739-1751
“Richard Barton, B.D., Author of The analogy of Divine wisdom, in the Material, Sensitive, Moral, Civil, and Spiritual System of things,” was also the author of “Lectures in natural philosophy, Designed to be a foundation, for reasoning pertinently, upon the petrefactions, gems, crystals, and sanitive quality of Lough Neagh in Ireland; And intended to be An Introduction, to the Natural History of Several Counties contiguous to that lake, Particularly The County of Ardmagh.” I transcribe these titles exactly, feeling that they ought to be accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets. But it is to be feared that the reverend gentleman's books, with their resounding descriptions, dedications, addresses, and rather bombastic quasi-scientific contents, failed to impress a thoughtless world, or to elucidate, in the case of the volume concerning Lough Neagh, the puzzling phenomenon of the silicified wood occurring there, to which his attention was specially directed. Save that his father, Rev. John Barton, D.D., Dean of Ardagh, was Vice-Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, little is to be discovered concerning the man himself, who, from the evidence of his works, was curate of Lurgan from 1742 until his death in 1751. But his “Lectures,” never delivered but beautifully printed, are a joy in themselves.

BRYAN PATRICK BEIRNE
b. 1918
B. P. Beirne was born at Rosslare, Co. Wexford. He entered Trinity College in 1934, and took the degrees of B.Sc. (1938), Ph.D. (1940), M.Sc. and M.A. (1941) in Dublin University, and winning an Overseas Research Scholarship worked at insects in the British Museum. He was appointed Assistant Director of Trinity College Museum in 1940, Assistant in Zoology (1942), and Lecturer in Entomology (1943), has written extensively on entomological subjects in various journals, and has done much work at the Irish Microlepidoptera. In 1929 he left Ireland to take up a post under the Department of Agriculture at Ottawa.

Personal information.

ALFRED BELL
1835-1925
Alfred Bell was born in London, and from 1868 onwards was an industrious worker at the fauna of the Pliocene deposits of England and western Europe. To Ireland he was attracted by the " Manure Gravels " of Wexford, deposits which were known to include certain (derived) Pliocene shells; and he presented four reports to the British Association on these and other east coast post-glacial deposits (1888-1891). He advanced materially our knowledge of the fauna of the times from before till after the Ice Age, publishing in the Reports of the British Association and elsewhere.

Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 82 (Proc.), lix.

ROBERT BELL
1864-1934
Robert Bell was a notable example of a combination rare in Ireland, which may be described as the working-man naturalist. He was born in Co. Down, and became a rivetter in the ship-building yard of Harland and Wolff, Belfast. From youth he devoted his spare time to mineralogy and palaeontology, acquiring a most intimate knowledge of local rocks and their contents. He did not write of his findings, but his specimens went to many museums and collectors especially in England. Two of the minerals which he found were new, and were named scawtite and larnite from their places of origin, both in Antrim. He was a valued member of the Belfast Field Club, from which he received Honorary Membership and also its Commemoration Medal. He was made a Life Member of the Mineralogical Society of London, and an Honorary Member of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society; and was granted by the Government of Northern Ireland a Civil List Pension in 1930 in recognition of his scientific work.

O'BRYEN BELLINGHAM
1805-1857
Born in Dublin, Bellingham became a distinguished surgeon of that city. He published in the Magazine of Natural History (4, 1840) and the Annals of Natural History (13-14, 1844) an important “Catalogue of the Entozoa indigenous to Ireland,” a subject but little studied in that country before or since. He was one of the founders of the Natural History Society of Dublin.

S. A. BENNETT
1868-1934
Stephen Allen Bennett was born at Burslem. He took the M.A. degree at Cambridge and later the B.Sc. in London. He then studied for two years at Heidelberg. In 1898 he was appointed science master at Campbell College, Belfast, and remained there till failing health caused his resignation in 1926. He acquired a sound knowledge of the local phanerogams, and extended the range of a number of the rarer species, as will be seen from the Flora of the North-east of Ireland, second (1938) edition, and he was interested also in geology and anthropology. Bennett was President of the Belfast Field Club, of which he was an active member, in 1920-1922, and was awarded its Commemoration Medal.

Irish Nat. Journ., 5, 37, portrait. Personal knowledge.

CHARLES WILLIAM BENSON
1836-1919
Rev. C. W. Benson, M.A., LL.D., school-master and clergyman, lover of birds, will be long remembered not for his writings, which were slight, but as an apostle of the interest and beauty of birds. Born at Casdecomer, he took his B.A. degree in Dublin University in 1859, and in the same year he started Rathmines School, which under his wise and energetic leadership became one of the leading educational establishments in Dublin. He took the LL.D. degree, and after completing the Divinity course held in succession two local curacies, but the care of his school and his devotion to ornithology were his main pre-occupations for forty years. His little book Our Irish Song-birds, written with charm and understanding, is worthy of a true naturalist. He resigned his head-mastership in 1899, and in 1902 became rector of Balbriggan, where he died still full of mental and physical energy at the age of eighty-three years.

Irish Nat., 28, 73, portrait. Personal knowledge.

EDWIN BIRCHELL
1819-1884
Birchen was born near Leeds. He entered his father's business there, and later was Pickford's agent in Leeds, Dublin, and other places. A fall from a cliff wrecked his health and he settled in the Isle of Man. He wrote much on entomological subjects (1864-1878), his most important paper being his “Notes on the Lepidoptera of Ireland” (Entom. Monthly Mag., 1864-1867).

GERARD BOATE
1604-1649
Gerard, Boate, De Boot, Bootius, or Botius, was a Dutchman, born at Gorcum. He passed through the famous University of Leyden, obtaining the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Coming to London, he was appointed physician to King Charles I. An act of the English Parliament of 1642 admitted the Dutch to subscribe to a fund for the " reduction " of the Irish, to be repaid by the simple method of bestowing upon the subscribers grants of lands forfeited in that country by the English, and to this fund Boate contributed, with the ultimate result that, in 1667, his widow actually obtained a grant of over one thousand acres in Tipperary, in return for his payments. In order to assist this estimable scheme, Boate projected a book on the amenities of. Ireland, to whet the enthusiasm of " adventurers " for Irish land. He had never been to Ireland, but so slight a drawback was no deterrent to his writing about that country, basing his account on reports received from others; and a very interesting and mainly accurate book he made of it - a small duodecimo, first published in London in 1652. It was written in 1645; the author was appointed by Oliver Cromwell physician to the hospital in Dublin in 1649; but he died a few months after taking up his appointment there. The manuscript of his book (Ireland's Naturall History : Being a true and ample Description (and so on for just another 100 words). Written by Gerard Boate, late Doctor of Physick to the State of Ireland, and now Published by Samuell Hartlib, Esq. ; for the Common Good of Ireland, and more especially for the benefit of the adventurers and Planters therein) came into the possession of Hartlib, a Pole resident in London, a friend of John Milton, a philanthropist and writer; in his philanthropy he proposed to supplant the ejected Irish by exiled Protestants, Bohemians, and some well affected out of the Low Countries." Boate's book itself is highly interesting; it gives an excellent account of Ireland, which shows that he was well served by those from whom he obtained his information. That it excited attention is known by the fact that it ran through several editions, including a French translation.

L. H. BONAPARTE-WYSE
b. 1874
Lionel Henry Bonaparte-Wyse was born near Waterford city, third son of William Charles Bonaparte-Wyse, Provençal poet and friend of Mistral. Contact with Rev. W. W. Flemyng of Pordaw started him as a boy in the study of entomology. Educated in Belgium and France he came to live in England in 1910. He has made many visits to Ireland, as shown by his numerous notes on Irish insects in the Irish Naturalist, 1897-1924. Coleoptera and Lepidoptera have been his principal study.

Personal information.

WILLIAM BOWLES
1705-1780
Born near Cork, and intended for the law, Bowles went to Paris to study science. He became superintendent of state mines in Spain, and later was commissioned to form a natural history collection there. After extensive travels in that country, he published in Madrid an Introduccion a la Historia Natural, y a la Geographia fisica de Espagne (1775), which was translated into several other languages. The Peruvian genus Bowlesia Ruiz. & Pavon. was dedicated to him.

Webb: Compend. Irish Biogr., 28. Renouf, Irish Nat. Journ., 3, 237.

D. B. BRADSHAW
1869-1944
David Bigham Bradshaw was one of the small band of botanists who made the Irish mosses and liverworts their special study. Born in Ballyshannon, he received a school education in Dublin and Portora, and spent his life in the service of the Provincial Bank of Ireland, retiring in 1936 to live in Dublin. He was a diligent worker at the Muscineae, adding a number of new stations for rarer Irish species, and ever ready with advice and help to other students.

Irish Nat. Joum., 8, 166, portrait. Personal knowledge.

SAMUEL ARTHUR BRENAN
1837-1908
Rev. S. A. Brenan, B.A. (Dublin) who died at his rectory at Cushendun, Co. Antrim, after a long tenure of office, was an observant zoologist and botanist, and published notes, mainly of Antrim animals and plants, and chiefly in the Irish Naturalist. He was the first finder in Ireland of Hieracium tridentatum (at Marble Arch) still known only from Fermanagh and Donegal.

ROBERT BROWN
1773-1858
This distinguished botanist, born at Montrose, is connected with Ireland in that he was stationed in Ulster between 1795 and 1800 as surgeon in the Fifeshire Regiment of Fencibles, and collected plants, which are recorded in his MSS. preserved in the British Museum, and the records transferred thence to local Floras.

Dia. Nat. Biogr., Suppl. I, 302. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 48.

THOMAS BROWN
fl. 1816-1846
Thomas Brown was a Captain in the Forfarshire Militia, and a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and interested in both zoology and botany. He wrote an Account of the Irish Testacea (1815) and mentioned Irish shells in other more general writings (1827-1845), published mostly in Edinburgh. His Irish Testacea was the earliest work of importance on the Irish Land and Fresh-water Mollusca.

Roy. Soc. Cat. Sci. Papers, 1, 662. Britten & Boulger, ed. 2, 49.

PATRICK BROWNE
1720-1790
Patrick Browne, M.D. of Leyden (where he formed an intimacy with Linnaeus and other noteworthy men), was one of the pioneers in Irish natural history. His Fasciculus Plantarum Hiberniae (MS.) has survived, and is preserved in the library of the Linnean Society; the specimens were collected mainly in Mayo (where he was born, at Woodstock) and Galway, in 1788. He published catalogues of the birds and fishes of Ireland in Exshaw's Magazine (1774). He made many visits to the West Indies, where he collected extensively. His most important work (1756, 2nd ed. 1765) dealt with the natural history of Jamaica. Jacquin dedicated the genus Brownaea to him.

J. P. BRUNKER
1885 - 1970
James Ponsonby Brunker, of 28 Grosvenor Place, Rathmines, Dublin, early got in touch with that excellent botanist, R. W. Scully, and took up the botanical exploration of County Wicklow (higher plants), on which he has now been engaged for many years; it is hoped that his Flora of the area will soon appear. He spent most of his life in the service of Arthur Guinness & Co. of Dublin, from which firm he retired in 1945. He is a good ornithologist, and is a leading member of the Dublin Naturalists' Field Club.

Personal knowledge.

JAMES BRYCE (the younger)
1806-1877
James Bryce, M.A., LL.D., belonging to a Scottish family, son of Rev. James Bryce, was born near Coleraine, educated at home, and graduated at Glasgow in 1828. He joined the staff of the Belfast Academy, a well-known boys' and girls' school. Interested in geology, he published papers on fossils of Co. Antrim and other subjects in the Philosophical Magazine, etc. Appointed in 1846 mathematical master of the Glasgow High School, he wrote books on mathematics, astronomy and geology, and on his retirement continued to write on Scottish geology. His Alma Mater conferred on him in 1858 the degree of LL.D. He was killed by a fall of cliff in the highlands. His eldest son was created Viscount Bryce of Dechmont in 1914.

CLAUDE W. BUCKLE
d. 1904
" One of the most careful and talented entomologists who ever worked in Ireland." He contributed to the Irish Naturalist two important papers in 1900 and 1902, as well as some notes, and made over fifty additions to the Irish fauna, chiefly among the Coleoptera. He resided in the Foyle and in the Belfast areas.

Irish Nat. 13, 156.

G. R. BULLOCK-WEBSTER
1858-1934
Rev. George Russell Bullock-Webster, Canon of Ely, took the B.A. degree at Cambridge in 1879, and the M.A. in 1887, and became a London clergyman. For many years he studied the Charophyta or Stoneworts, and was joint author with James Groves of the well-known Ray Society monograph (1920-1924) on these interesting plants. He visited Ireland several times, collecting in Donegal especially, also in Monaghan, adding several species to the Irish list - Nitella mucronata, N. spanioclema, Chara muscosa, the last two being new to science.

Who was Who. Groves and Bullock-Webster, op. cit. Praeger: Botanist in Ireland, 78.